ProfessorTom Carlson

Project Opportunities

1. Project title: Eating with our eyes: How does vision affect food decisions?
Project summary: Poor dietary choices have contributed to a health epidemic in the developed world. Vision plays a significant role in food decisions. This project goes beyond traditional approaches by investigating vision’s active role in food decisions. Utilizing behavioural and brain imaging studies, we will examine how visual processing influences food choices and how plasticity in the visual system shapes our perception of food. Led by a team with expertise in human vision, brain imaging, consumer decision-making, and clinical eating disorders, this research will advance our understanding of vision’s role in food choices while creating opportunities to develop strategies that encourage healthier eating habits.

Requirements: a degree in Psychology with programming skills are essential, and experience with computational methods preferable.

This opportunity/project is part of the Faculty of Science Australian Research Council (ARC) Scholarship scheme and is now advertised on the Scholarship Office website. Applications are open and will close on 18 January 2026.

2. Project Title: Brain reading

Summary of opportunity:

This project seeks to elucidate the connection between brain and behaviour. To this end, students will use human neuroimaging experiments (fMRI, MEG, EEG) to measure how the brain represents visual information. Computational modelling will be used to predict human behaviour from the neuroimaging data.

Opportunity synopsis:

This project aims to develop generalizable models that can be used to predict behaviour from brain activity. The project will require students to design and run human neuroimaging experiments, learn sophisticated analysis methods (e.g. machine learning), and develop computational models that can be used to predict future behaviour data from the neuroimaging data.

----------Current Research Projects----------

Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (2016-2019) "Tracking the Flow of Perceptual Information Through Decision Networks" Carlson, T.A., Shine, M., Coutanche, M., Cichy, R.